Connecticut Pro-Lifers Try to Stop Bill to OK Assisted Suicide

Sen. Ed Meyer has introduced S.B. 48, a bill to legalize assisted suicide in Connecticut. Defeating this anti-life bill will be the highest legislative priority of the Family Institute of Connecticut Action in 2013.

The pro-life group is already hard at work on defeating the measure but needs help. From a statement to LifeNews:

No one supports keeping a patient alive by extraordinary means against that patient’s will. That is not the subject of this bill. Rather, assisted suicide means that someone provides the means and/or information for another person to commit suicide. When a physician is involved, the practice is physician-assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide is not only an attack on human life, it is bad public policy that puts vulnerable populations–the sick, the elderly, the disabled–in harm’s way. Even our very liberal neighboring state of Massachusetts rejected assisted suicide at the ballot last November, with the help of many liberals who were concerned about those vulnerable populations.

Though assisted suicide was legalized in Washington and Oregon via referendum, no such law has made it through the scrutiny of a legislature despite more than 100 attempts. Indeed, the experience of those states is why it has failed to pass in Massachusetts and elsewhere. The Oregon and Washington laws are restricted to patients predicted to have less than six months to live but such persons are not necessarily dying and doctors can be wrong.

The law leads to elder abuse and empowers the health care system in ways that puts the vulnerable at risk. In Oregon, patients desiring treatment under the Oregon Health Plan have been offered assisted suicide instead.

We cannot let this happen in Connecticut. FIC Action needs your help to stop S.B. 48, the assisted suicide bill. Here are four ways that you can fight back:

1) Use our Grassroots Action Center to send an e-mail directly to your state senator and state representative by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message. The link will direct you to another screen with a “take action” button at the bottom. Click on the “take action” button to e-mail your legislators. We have provided some basic points, but please either put the message in your own words or add a brief introduction and conclusion! Personalized messages have a much greater impact. Let our legislators know that you want them to oppose S.B. 48, the assisted suicide bill.

4) Forward this message to every like-minded state resident you know and ask them to do likewise. Use the FIC Action Center to share this message on Facebook and Twitter. We need as much support as possible to stop assisted suicide in Connecticut.

Thank you for making your voice heard in the fight to protect our most vulnerable citizens from assisted suicide. Click on the link below to contact your legislators.